The printing industry uses sleeves for mounting printing plates on the print cylinder so that the printing plate is not mounted directly on the cylinder. This results in the advantage that one can leave the printing plates mounted to the less expensive sleeve rather than requiring unmounting the plates or having to tie up an expensive print cylinder. There is a likelihood that the same printing plate will be used in the near future and thus using the sleeve will save on set up time.
Various approaches have been taken in the art to provide carrier sleeves for such printing cylinders. Reference is made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 3,978,254, 4,030,415, 4,601,928, 4,903,597, 5,215,013, 5,256,459, 5,301,610, 5,425,693 and 5,458,708 which exemplify known approaches. All of the details of these patents are incorporated herein by reference thereto.
An object of this invention is to provide an improved printing cylinder sleeve assembly which overcomes various disadvantages of the prior art approaches.
A further object of this invention is to provide such a printing cylinder sleeve assembly which would be economical to make and easy to install and use,
In accordance with this invention the printing cylinder sleeve assembly comprise an inner or bridge sleeve which would be mounted directly on the print cylinder. A thin outer sleeve would be mounted over the bridge sleeve with the outer dimension of the bridge sleeve and the inner dimension of the outer sleeve being such that the mounting is by way of a clip fit rather than an interference fit.